Although of Course You End Up Becoming YourselfNPR coverage of Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace by David Lipsky. News, author interviews, critics' picks and more.

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Book Summary

Shares the author's travels with the late David Foster Wallace based on interviews from the 1996 "Infinite Jest" book tour, covering such topics as Wallace's literary process, struggles with fame, and battle with mental illness.

Note: Book excerpts are provided by the publisher and may contain language some find offensive.

Excerpt: Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself

January 1, 201012:00 AM ET

first daydavid’s housetuesday before classin the living room, playing chesshis dogs slinking back and forth over carpet3/5/96

You were saying about the tour that while we travel, “I need to know thatanything that I ask you fi ve minutes later to not put in, you won’t put in.”Given my level of fatigue and fuck- up quotient lately, it’s the onlyway I can see doin’ it and not going crazy.

[Drone—he’s got two dogs—is chewing on the chair David sits in.He now has an unlisted phone number, because of fans.]

I don’t know if “fan” would be the right word . . .

[Looking at bookcases . . . He had a board out, and is eager to play.So we are playing chess.]

I think when I was twenty- five this was what I wanted. But . . . Idon’t mind it now. I mean, I’m proud of the book, I’m glad thebook is getting attention. Stuff about me is (a) makes me uncomfortableand (b) is bad for me, because it makes me self- consciouswhen I write. And I do not need to be more self- conscious. Oh,fuck me! It takes a while for me to get in a groove. I honestly don’tknow what’s gonna sort of eventuate here. Well, fuck! (Looking atthe board)Little, Brown bought both the hardcover and the softcover rightsat the same time. I think I could make a lot if I took an advance forthe next thing, but I can’t do that, so . . .

[He’s not interested in money for next novels, which friends havesaid is the wisest course. I talk about my own friends—peoplehe knows too—who arranged deals while touring for successfulbooks.]

That’s incredible. I’ve got this thing where I just can’t take moneyfor something till it’s done. So I’m sort of screwed about that stuff.(Slow, Southernish voice) I’ve been burnt on this before, I just can’tdo it.I had no choice on this book, it was sort of under way. There wasso much research I had to do, that I literally could not teach and doit at the same time. So I decided to eat it, and do it. But it would havebeen a lot more fun if I hadn’t taken any money for it.

[He’s playing pop radio, the local college station. I haven’t heard thissong in so much time: INXS, “It’s the One Thing.” David nods, sayshe loves their song “Don’t Change.”]

You know, I went through such a bad time in my twenties. Thinkinglike, Oh no, I’m this genius writer, everything I do’s gotta be ingenious,blah blah blah blah, and bein’ so shut down and miserable forthree or four years. That it’s worth any amount of money to me, notto go there again. And I’m aware that that sounds maybe Pollyannaishor sound- bitish. But it’s actually just the truth.I was twenty- eight years old, and that means not taking an ad-vance for stuff before it’s done. And it’s money well spent as far asI’m concerned.

Aware of your fame here?The grad students are vaguely aware I think.

They must follow it?I think kids in the Midwest are different than kids on the East Coast.I think Time and Newsweek are fairly inescapable. So I think theykinda know. I’m sort of so nasty when they start talking about thatstuff in class that I think I’ve scared them into just leaving it alone.

Why?Because it’s toxic to them and it’s toxic to me. That class is myuh—I’m there to learn, not to talk about my own stuff. And I’mthere . . . when I’m teaching, I’m there as a reader, not a writer. Andthe more—it’s extremely unpleasant, the more, uh, the more I’mthere in a kind of writerly persona . . .There’s this weird scam in creative writing workshops thatsomehow the teacher’s gonna teach you how—they’re gonna beable to teach you how to do exactly what it is they do. Which is whythese programs try to pack themselves with the best- known andmost- respected writers. (“Wraters”) As if how good a writer youare and how good a teacher you are have anything to do with eachother. I don’t think so. I know too many really good writers who areshitty teachers, and vice versa, to think that. I think that the teaching. . . well, the teaching has helped my own writing a lot . . . Somaybe I don’t think that anymore. But the writers are often interestedin preserving as much of their own time as they can.

[Hums while he plays chess: not tremendously good at chess; strong,however, at humming.]

Well, that really didn’t do a whole heck of a lot for me, did it?Shit. All right, we’ve got time for one more move each and thenwe have to leave. I’ve got to brush my teeth.I took the job for the health insurance. [Illinois State University]

[Bathroom cabinet: lots of tubes of Topol. (He’s a smoker.)

Dogs: Drone is “A provisional dog, he just showed up once whilewe were jogging,” they took him on.]

Some kind of weird, “I’ve made a terrible mistake with my life, Ineed to be selling insurance in Oshkosh” sort of feeling. [We’re talkingabout John Barth, and other writers who’ve gotten in trouble. Asudden in- the- wrong- place sense. An anxiety he felt before Infi niteJest.] I think that happens to a lot of writers.

[Went to Arizona State University. Edward Abbey was there . . . RobertBoswell helped him more than anybody . . . ]

I was so in thrall to Barth I just knew it would be sort of a grotesquething. [Why he couldn’t and didn’t go to Hopkins. He patterned thelongest part of his second book after Barth.]

• • •

in car, my rented grand amen route to class

This is the thing—you’re gonna have to sit around, you can’t even bein the office, because I’m gonna have to yell at a lot of people. I haveto cut it short: just because we’ve gotta get up at five in the morning.This is what’s fucked: it’s that, these poor kids, I haven’t beenaround for two weeks. And they all are gonna have various deals todiscuss. [So sensitive about all performance] I’m usually a muchbetter teacher than this. I swear to God.

Like doing readings?No.

You were good.Thanks. Tower Books—that’s not one I was particularly pleased with.I get so nervous beforehand, and the nervousness is so unpleasant,that that’s what I dislike. And I don’t think my stuff reads out loudvery well. And I think I come off looking like a maniac. Mainly I’mdoing what they blew up to larger type size. I give like one or tworeadings in colleges a year. I gave ’em ten things and they blew upfive of them.I read something (“sumpin’ ”) different at Tower just becausethis unbelievably cute girl from Spin magazine was there, and shedidn’t want to hear the same thing twice, so I totally trashed theplan. (He laughs.) And I never saw her again.

[The writer Elizabeth Wurtzel was at David’s KGB reading—a kindof Brezhnev- and- Pravda- themed bar in Lower Manhattan. She wasstanding right up front. We turn out to both know Elizabeth.]

I don’t know how Elizabeth—Liz got like the best seat in the house,using skills I think only Elizabeth has. Ah, she’s real nice. She’s agood egg. Good egg.When you’re eighteen, you realize that—there’s also a part of usthat wants to be the president. And there’s also a part that wants tofuck every attractive person of the gender of our choice. I mean, youknow . . . Just, I think she’s gotta be more—it’s not an accident thatshe’s depressed all the time. I don’t know. Maybe I just project allkinds of weird stuff onto her . . .

They laugh. He’s the ideal, the professor you hope for: lightningwriter, modern references, charming and funny and firm.The students know another thing: he’s become, theirbandanna- wearing teacher, during these past three weeks a suddenlycelebrated man. And they want somehow to acknowledge it.

Dave: The words “pop quiz” is what’s good about that.They talk about his magazine photos. Dave blushes more.

Dave: I didn’t think, I didn’t think—you can see my smiling maw. Ithought, “Really? Is that me?”

Dave fishes out a Styrofoam cup after pawing through two wastebaskets,for someplace to put his chewing tobacco. Is also drinkinga Diet Pepsi.Class begins with a jump from celebrity into the supernormal,the administrative.

Dave: Office hours next week. Bring light reading material, if youhave to wait in the hallway.

Begins work on student stories.

Dave: (Offering Very Sensible advice. Lots of jobs for fiction, youhave to keep track of twelve different things—characters, plot,sound, speed.) But the job of the first eight pages is not to havethe reader want to throw the book at the wall, during the firsteight pages.

He paces around the classroom. Happy, energetic. At one point,thinking, he even drops into a quick knee bend. Class laughs; theyreally like him.

Dave: I know—I get real excited, and now I’m squatting.

First story: by pretty student with a Rosanna Arquette mouth. Daveon story, always using TV: “I submit, it’s kinda like a Sam and Dianething. Or When Harry Met Sally.”

Another story he likes: it’s very open, but needs to be controlled.“This is just a head kinda vomiting at us . . .”Less likable story: “This is just a campus romance story.And to the average civilian, I’ve gotta tell you, this is not thatinteresting . . .”

Now at desk. Craning up and down when discussion and storyget him excited.The student being workshopped is a punkish guy: mohawk,silver- and- yellow collar.

Dave: It’s really hard to create a narrator who’s alive. Take it from me.

Students: How?

Dave’s advice is a kind of comedy, and makes them laugh.

Dave: To have the narrator be funny and smart, have him say funny,smart things some of the time.

He makes a flub, says quickly, “Brain fart.”He stops for a second. Holds steady. “Excuse me, I’m about toburp.”His delivery is darting and graceful: the Astaire quality of goodteaching.

On the campus romance story. “The great dread of creative writingprofessors: ‘Their eyes met over the keg . . . ’ ”The key to writing is learning to differentiate private interestfrom public entertainment. One aid is, you’re supposed to get lessself- interested as you age. But, “I think I am more self- absorbedat thirty- four than twenty- three. Because if it’s interesting to me, Iautomatically imagine it’s interesting to you. I could spend a halfhour telling you about my trip to the store, but that might not be asinteresting to you as it is to me.”Reminds the class, as it breaks. Notebooks closing, bookbags risingfrom floor to desktop. Ruckle noises, kids standing. The week’stwo lessons.

Dave: Never—don’t go there: “Their eyes met across the keg . . . ”And “What’s interesting to me may not be to you.”

Still in good, buzzed- up mood after. Brings me a water to drink.

Dave: Where would you be without me?I hope it’s not that same tobacco- Styrofoam cup.

• • •

isu hallwaytalking to colleagues after class

“Was it a success?” [Colleagues ask about Infinite Jest tour.]No vegetables were thrown, so I consider it a success.I just made enough money to live off it for a couple of years, sothat’s good.